Tuesday, January 20, 2009
1/20/2009 09:34:00 AM

Posted by Amit Paunikar, Product Manager

Last week, we announced that we're turning down uploads to Google Video, and refocusing our attention on building a more comprehensive video search engine (in case you're wondering, Google Video search algorithms power YouTube as well as "universal search" from Google.com). We want to make it possible for people searching Google.com or Google Video to find any video, at any time, from any site. But indexing video presents some unique challenges, and if you have videos on your site, you're probably wondering how to make sure your videos are discoverable through Google.

We want video publishers to know that we've made it easier to submit your videos to Google. First, we've simplified the process that allows you to submit Sitemaps to Google. Second, we also extended our Video Sitemaps support to include Media RSS feeds. You do not have to specify the Sitemap file type—we'll determine the type of data you're submitting automatically.

The more information you make available, the easier it is for us to crawl your videos. Here are a few simple things you can include in your Sitemaps to make your videos easier to find:

1) Landing page URL: This is the page where the video is hosted. It's better to have a unique landing page for each video on your site.

2) Video thumbnail URL: Thumbnails provide a strong visual cue to the user. Your video thumbnail should be representative of a snapshot from the video, and should not be misleading in any way.

3) Title & Description: If these are accurate and descriptive, they not only help Google understand your video, but also help users choose the best video search result. Providing information about category, keyword tags and duration is always helpful.

Whether or not you have Video Sitemaps or MRSS feeds, of course, it's important that you make sure that Google can crawl and index your video sites correctly. Make sure you understand how Google crawls, indexes and serves the web. Review the Webmaster Guidelines that will help Google find, index and rank your site. We've also updated the Google Video Help Center to include more information for video publishers. While there's no guarantee that our spiders will find a particular site, following these guidelines should increase the chances of finding videos from your site in the search results.